These were just a few of the world-class musicians, writers and performances featured at the Woodstock Playhouse - before Ralph Miller bought it in 1985 and it was destroyed by fire three years later.

Events like those made the Woodstock Playhouse much more than your average summer stock theater.

This was a premier performance space in one of the world's premier arts communities - a community where stars like Hendrix and Bob Dylan could not only live, but walk down a street of shops and galleries without being hassled.

"It was the heart of artistic activity," says Woodstock musician Peter Rogen, who's lived in the Ulster County town tucked in the mountains for 50 years.

The Playhouse wasn't just a hub for the arts. It was an economic and social magnet that, in the '60s and '70s, drew folks to town for midnight folk concerts featuring Tom Paxton and Richie Havens, children's shows and an art gallery next door.

And with its location at the intersection of Routes 212 and 375, the wooden theater with the big white WOODSTOCK PLAYHOUSE letters on top was the first thing most visitors saw.

"It was the gateway to town," says Jay Cohen, another longtime resident, who recalls seeing the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre at the Quonset hut-shaped building built in 1938. "You didn't have to go to the city to see great things."

So when Miller took over the theater and tried to apply the standard summer stock practice of rotating young, inexpensive casts performing commercial musicals, the people of Woodstock weren't buying it. Attendance dwindled.

Miller shut the theater after one season and tried to sell it as a commercial property, perhaps to Grand Union - a move hampered when the theater was named to the state's Registry of Historic Places, over Miller's objections.

After the previous owner, Harris Gordon, got the land back through foreclosure, he gave it to the town. The non-profit Woodstock Arts Board rebuilt it.

But the Woodstock Playhouse has never been the same. It's an open-air theater that only hosted a handful of events this summer. The Arts Board is now trying to raise some $2 million to improve it.

Steve Israel

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